AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: RED SOX v YANKEES

October 18, 2004

Terry Francona

TERRY FRANCONA: I slept a little bit. Unfortunately I had little kids who had to go back to school today, so it was an early wake-up call and a late good night, which is okay. I don't think anybody is going to be complaining today about lack of sleep. We'll be all right.

TERRY FRANCONA: Yeah, that was, again, I don't want to get too far into it because we need to get there. The way we approached yesterday was it was the only day that mattered. Today is very similar. We've showed up so often this year and just wanted to win a game and did it pretty successfully, so we'll try to do the same thing today. As far as Schill went, though, he did very well. He did well enough where we named him the starter without any qualms.

TERRY FRANCONA: I think the mood in our clubhouse has been the same all year. I don't ever remember walking into the clubhouse seeing guys down or quiet. It just not the way they operate. Their personality is their personality. I don't think you can force those things. If you do I think it's wrong. They have been themselves all year. I don't think that's ever going to change.

TERRY FRANCONA: But...

TERRY FRANCONA: Well, he's not really having a whole lot of new equipment. We've been over this so many times. He had a shoe, that we've already been over. He just needed another side session. I mean, you said sucking it up, I don't know if I'd -- he's a tough guy. But, again, it just all goes back to the point, we wanted him to pitch if he could pitch being healthy, not at risk and also being able to be productive. I think that's where we're at.

TERRY FRANCONA: Well, we're not going to save them up for next week. What we'll do is we'll go out for BP in about an hour and a half and the pitchers all go down the right field line and do their throwing. Obviously there are some guys that threw a lot last night. They understand the situation, also, and we'll evaluate where we are when we go out and have them throw and then we'll piece it together and see how many -- it's almost like a puzzle, we'll just see how many pitches or how much you they think they can tolerate and then we'll try and put it together and win.

TERRY FRANCONA: Well, I'm glad, first of all that they seemed like that. That doesn't surprise me. Our guys do a pretty good job of being honest with themselves. Like Foulke last night, asking him for the third inning, I think he -- I've been around him for a couple of years now. You get to know these guys so well now, if they don't ask out of a game, if they need to come into a game or don't need to go into a game and we don't just check with the pitchers. We have bullpen coaches and catchers. We pretty much check with everybody to get the best read on these guys.

TERRY FRANCONA: Well, I don't know. We didn't call a meeting to tell them. You know, I just think sometimes I don't think you guys quite understand. We don't call meetings every ten minutes. I don't stand up and tell them we have to pin tonight or so and so is pitching. They have this routine, they go out and take batting practice, they come in and watch a video and do whatever they do and go play the game. Half of them still might not know. They just know they have to show up today and win.

TERRY FRANCONA: Well, the hope is that he doesn't do this time what he did last time. Sometimes when you get a pitcher of Mussina's stature, like a Pedro or a Schilling, if they are on their game about the best thing you can do is make them work and try to get them out of there. He threw so well last time, he went right through us for six innings. Hopefully he won't be quite that sharp and put some pitches over the middle of the plate for us to hit. But it's our job to make him do that, too. Just like they are going to do to us, try to get him out of there early, because their bullpen was used as much as ours was last night.

TERRY FRANCONA: He's our mainstay. He's our every day third baseman. Just like everybody else, he shows up every day, it's fun to talk about it because of the kind of kid he is, the way he goes about his business, we talked about him last night for a little while, such a good kid and he gives you everything he has. He's so conscientious sometimes, like when he looks down for 3-0 to see if he's hitting it or not, you see he doesn't ever want a sign, he's so conscientious in everything he does, and he's a pretty good baseball player.